Mama?" "Yes, Emmy." She traced a rivulet of rain with her finger as it made its journey down the glass. "How do you know when it's been long enough?" Emmy could sense her mother smiling into the phone. "When you relaize that love doesn't have a time span. Only pain does. I think sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the two, so we just hold on to both of them like they're inseparable.

A life without rain is like the sun without shade.

But there is room now in my heart for more memories, carved by a letting go that I could find only by coming home to a place I'd never been.

Great tragedy gives us opportunities for great kindness.

Strong winds buffet the sea oats and tall dune grasses, tossing sand and seabirds where it will, winding my sister's golden hair into sunlit spirals of silk until it becomes the only good memory I have of her -- the only memory I allowed myself to keep.

The word that came to me now was "defiant." Because a person had to be defiant to be able to stand amid the wreckage of her life and instead of shaking a fist, pick up a hammer.

To give up too easily leads to regret, yet trying and then failing can lead us to second chances if we do not accept it as a failure, but a chance to learn.